Elite Dangerous needs its own "Operation Health"

K-Rose · May 12, 2017

So Ubisoft of all companies have committed to pulling one of their money making expansions in favour of improving the core of their game, Rainbow Six: Siege. They'll be driving to improve the servers & bug fixes.

https://rainbow6.ubisoft.com/siege/en-US/news/152-290265-16/operation-health-qa

I think 99% of people here would agree that we all want to see improvements to the core of Elite. Not the drip feed bug fixes we've been receiving but a fully fleshed 100% push to fix the core of the game, server stability & mechanics.

So to draw attention to this... FD if Ubisoft can manage to take their finger of the money drug, take a step back and agree to improve the core stability & mechanics of the game, please can you take a serious look at doing this?

I think the best way to do this would be to have a 2.5 update which comes before 3.0.

Edit: Victory!!!

BL1P · May 12, 2017

Yup +1

RedwoodLynx · May 12, 2017

Thought the exact same thing when I saw tbis- R6 siege is the best example of post launch support.

Soopyyy · May 12, 2017

Yeah no argument there.

GreyAreaUK · May 12, 2017

K-Rose said:
I think the best way to do this would be to have a 2.5 update which comes before 3.0.

I had exactly the same idea (2.5) earlier today!

A 'no new features' release that's purely about bug fixing, performance tuning, and generally making the current framework rock solid.

Shadowdancer · May 12, 2017

K-Rose said:
So to draw attention to this... FD if Ubisoft can manage to take their finger of the money drug, take a step back and agree to improve the core stability & mechanics of the game, please can you take a serious look at doing this?

Ubisoft cash and cash equivalents end of March 2016: EUR 255,688,000 and a truckload of entrenched products on the market.
Frontier Developments cash and cash equivalents end of November 2016: GBP 6,747,000 and three-ish products on the market, with one that could be considered "mainstream".

Don't try to compare what they can do on a financial basis.

K-Rose · May 12, 2017

Shadowdancer said:
Ubisoft cash and cash equivalents end of March 2016: EUR 255,688,000 and a truckload of entrenched products on the market.
Frontier Developments cash and cash equivalents end of November 2016: GBP 6,747,000 and three-ish products on the market, with one that could be considered "mainstream".

Don't try to compare what they can do on a financial basis.

It wasn't so much a financial basis as much as a goodwill and investment in the game.

Ubisoft are notorious for only caring about the cash, FD less so, so it's a challenge to FD to commit to investing in the core of their game, the server, matchmaking, gameplay, bugs.

ShiftedX · May 12, 2017

I have zero expectations from 2.4 so I wouldn't mind it being focused on fixes and improvements.

PS. The deployment cycle in that link is what FDev should look at.
TTS (otherwise known as Beta) > PC > Console.
I'm glad big names (in this case, Ubi) are noticing the benefits of doing things this way, FDev should too.

Thetele · May 12, 2017

Yeah, hope Frontier do something similar. They probably don't wnat to release next paid dlc soon after ps4 launch so new ps4 players don't feel ripped off. Fd could spend spent sometime to address the core game.

I am really happy that Ubisoft do this with siege. Last year they did the same with the division (delayed second dlc by 3-4 months to fix the core) and it made that game much better and fun to play.

Crank Larson · May 12, 2017

K-Rose said:
so it's a challenge to FD to commit to investing in the core of their game, the server, matchmaking, gameplay, bugs.

Really? When did they say that?

CMDR Ofan · May 12, 2017

K-Rose said:
It wasn't so much a financial basis as much as a goodwill and investment in the game.

Ubisoft are notorious for only caring about the cash, FD less so, so it's a challenge to FD to commit to investing in the core of their game, the server, matchmaking, gameplay, bugs.

It only works in theory because with a game with the type of complexity that you find in ED a lot of problems only manifest when the game is released and out in the wild and put under the kind of stress you can only find when thousands of players use it at once.

'Gameplay' will always be the last thing to be polished because gameplay is dependant on mechanics so fd HAVE to incrementally drip feed mechanics in and create what gameplay they can from each iteration, You have to build the game form the bottom up not the top down.

People are only likely to start feeling satisfied with "gameplay" some point around season 5 when you can imagine they have added a fair amount of core mechanics and can then start building on it, anything else is counterproductive to the development process.

K-Rose · May 12, 2017

purplepomegranite said:
Really? When did they say that?

I said that...

Quester91 · May 12, 2017

Only one of these "operations" may not be enough for Elite at its current state.

There are *a lot* of core mechanics to flesh out and a lot of bugs to squish.
Basically almost everything game play related, apart from flying the ship in normal space and combat mechanics, needs a serious revamp. Good luck with that.

But hey, aren't my cmdr's tattoos nice.

GreyAreaUK · May 12, 2017

Quester91 said:
Only one of these "operations" may not be enough for Elite at its current state.

There are *a lot* of core mechanics to flesh out and a lot of bugs to squish.
Basically almost everything game play related, apart from flying the ship in normal space and combat mechanics, needs a serious revamp. Good luck with that.

But hey, aren't my cmdr's tattoos nice.

Oh for Heaven's sake...

Xious · May 12, 2017

I agree

Straha Yeagar · May 12, 2017

CMDR Ofan said:
It only works in theory because with a game with the type of complexity that you find in ED a lot of problems only manifest when the game is released and out in the wild and put under the kind of stress you can only find when thousands of players use it at once.

'Gameplay' will always be the last thing to be polished because gameplay is dependant on mechanics so fd HAVE to incrementally drip feed mechanics in and create what gameplay they can from each iteration, You have to build the game form the bottom up not the top down.

People are only likely to start feeling satisfied with "gameplay" some point around season 5 when you can imagine they have added a fair amount of core mechanics and can then start building on it, anything else is counterproductive to the development process.

And that is a huge point of contention that has brought a lot of the current discontent to the surface...the biggest issues and bugs with 2.3 were identified by the early access players VERY early on in the misnamed beta. They were not the result of some manifestation in the live game. They were present from the get go, yet inexplicably, the decision was made by Frontier to go ahead and release 2.3 and all of the identified and unfixed major issues into the live game. And on top of that, they chose to release it right before a four day holiday. That directly calls into question Frontiers decision making ability.

burzum · May 12, 2017

CMDR Ofan said:
It only works in theory because with a game with the type of complexity that you find in ED a lot of problems only manifest when the game is released and out in the wild and put under the kind of stress you can only find when thousands of players use it at once.

ROFL, ED is anything else but not really complex. Thousands of players? You know that an instance has a maximum of 32 players and is using P2P instead of a dedicated server?

NeilF · May 12, 2017

K-Rose said:
So Ubisoft of all companies have committed to pulling one of their money making expansions in favour of improving the core of their game, Rainbow Six: Siege. They'll be driving to improve the servers & bug fixes.

https://rainbow6.ubisoft.com/siege/en-US/news/152-290265-16/operation-health-qa

I think 99% of people here would agree that we all want to see improvements to the core of Elite. Not the drip feed bug fixes we've been receiving but a fully fleshed 100% push to fix the core of the game, server stability & mechanics.

So to draw attention to this... FD if Ubisoft can manage to take their finger of the money drug, take a step back and agree to improve the core stability & mechanics of the game, please can you take a serious look at doing this?

I think the best way to do this would be to have a 2.5 update which comes before 3.0.

Improve the 2+yr old core professions, mechanics and gameplay depth (AKA placeholders) we currently have? Yes please!

Just imagine it... Actual more involved gameplay, game mechanics and content! - I think I've asked for that a few times now I come to think of it

CMDR Ofan · May 12, 2017

straha20 said:
And that is a huge point of contention that has brought a lot of the current discontent to the surface...the biggest issues and bugs with 2.3 were identified by the early access players VERY early on in the misnamed beta. They were not the result of some manifestation in the live game. They were present from the get go, yet inexplicably, the decision was made by Frontier to go ahead and release 2.3 and all of the identified and unfixed major issues into the live game. And on top of that, they chose to release it right before a four day holiday. That directly calls into question Frontiers decision making ability.

The timing of its release does not change the way ED works internally, or any software for that matter. Bugs are buggy and often only manifest in very particular conditions which can take literally months to recreate or solve in the confines of the devs chair. While it may please you to imagine FD as some kind of machiavellian mastermind, deliberately leaving bugs in or releasing with bugs on purpose that is not even close to how it works. If you really believe in a world where FD do not release the best product they can in the best condition they can then I don't really know what to tell you other than maybe talking to some people who work with software might help your persepctive

burzum said:
ROFL, ED is anything else but not really complex. Thousands of players? You know that an instance has a maximum of 32 players and is using P2P instead of a dedicated server?

Your views of instancing restrictions (you can get more than 32 people in an instance just so you know) and gameplay complexity are nothing to do with the complexity of the software under the hood.

Sylow · May 12, 2017

In a way i agree, for me this suggestion reads a alot like "stop everything, rework it from ground up". This probably would hurt the game more than it would help.
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Looking at the games history, i see that we got several patches which clearly were hurried out of the doorway. Concepts which were not fully baked, in favour of meeting milestones and deadlines. As a result we, the community, complained loudly and constantly. And at least at the moment it seems like FD have abandoned mode of operation and seems to take a bit more time to get new content to better shape. What i mean is, sure multicrew is not perfect. Some things slipped through, some things could be better. But compared to what we got with Wings, PowerPlay and Engineers, things already got noticeably better.
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So i think that things are getting better. At the same time i think that completely pausing new content in favour of big reworks would hurt the playerbase. There is the risk of loosing too many players if no new content is added at all for a too long time. I believe that the slower speed of creating expansions, to rather deliver higher quality, is very beneficial for the game. Better quality of content creates positive feedback and thus improves the games reputation, which allows the game to acquire new players of have recent players to return. In contrast i think that a complete stop of new content in favour of fixing things might please the current playerbase, but won't do much to get new players or make former players return.
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The better way thus probably is to continue delivering new content, at the reduced speed we now have, while in parallel fixing some of the less liked aspects of the game. This if course means that problems are not getting fixed as quickly as if a while cycle would be spent only for them. But while quickly fixing all problems would be great for us ative players, it's actually also very much in our own interest that the game and ongoing development remains lucrative.
(I just currently very much experience with TSW, what happens when the games sales don't justify further development...

)
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